


the war is over (and we are beginning)

by ace_verity



Category: Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020), DC Extended Universe
Genre: Baking, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Getting Together, Grocery Shopping, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, Slow Burn, Vigilantism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-03
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:33:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22994758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ace_verity/pseuds/ace_verity
Summary: The thing is, Helena has no idea what comes after.The past fifteen years, she’s had a singular goal. She's never given any thought to what she’d do once she killed the men who murdered her family in front of her.Maybe, Helena realizes, she never actually thought she’d make it this far.---In which Helena Bertinelli joins a team, buys a cactus, beats up criminals, goes to church, bakes bread, and falls in love.(Not necessarily in that order.)
Relationships: Helena Bertinelli & Dinah Lance, Helena Bertinelli & Renee Montoya, Helena Bertinelli/Dinah Lance
Comments: 145
Kudos: 623





	1. here comes the first step

**Author's Note:**

> I saw _Birds of Prey_ and immediately fell a little bit in love with Helena Bertinelli. This fic is the result.  
> Work and chapter titles from "In Our Bedroom After the War" by Stars.  
> Hope you enjoy!

The first thing Helena does after — well, _after_ — is sleep.

When she finally wakes up, the ethereal orange glow of the streetlight outside her apartment is filtering through the window, painting strange shadows over the walls. There’s a faint headache pounding behind her eyes, and her mouth is cotton-dry and tastes like sour milk. She groans incoherently and swats at the nightstand until her hand lands on her phone. 

_1:23 AM_ , and the brightness of the screen nearly blinds her. Helena drops the phone and sags back against the mattress as it dawns on her that she’s slept for almost fourteen hours straight. God, her sleep schedule’s going to be absolutely _fucked._

She heads straight for the shower, because she’d collapsed straight into bed when she’d gotten back to her apartment the previous morning and she’s pretty sure that she’ll go insane if she has to spend any more time covered in a layer of grime and sweat and blood, most of it not her own, and probably taco grease on top of all that. 

Helena allows herself a much longer shower than she’d normally take, and when she finally steps out onto the tile, the mirror over the sink is fogged over with condensation. She swipes a hand over the glass, clearing a large enough patch that when she catches sight of her reflection, she halts and stares. 

Dark, mottled bruises — not many of them, thankfully — stand out against her pale skin, and her eyes seem tired and strangely vulnerable without her usual makeup. There’s a split in her lip, evidently reopened during her shower and now leaking a meager dribble of blood. She darts her tongue out to probe it and winces as her mouth fills with the taste of copper. 

Once she’s combed her hair and brushed her teeth (carefully avoiding the cut on her lip), Helena realizes that she’s ravenous and heads for the fridge.

It’s empty.

_Fuck_.

Alright, it’s not quite empty. There’s a lightly-expired quart of milk on the door, two eggs, and half a wedge of Parmesan — the real kind, imported from Italy, not the bottled chalk dust from the supermarket. An omelette, then, Helena decides.

She eats said omelette on the couch and mops up the remnants with a stale piece of bread she’d found in the pantry. When she’s done, she sets the plate on the couch cushion next to her and checks the time — 2:36.

Helena stares at the wall, listens to the distant wail of sirens, and wonders what the hell she’s going to do.

\---

The thing is —

The thing is, she has no idea what comes _after_. The past fifteen years, she’s had a singular goal: avenge her family or die trying. 

And that’s great, that’s _fine,_ but now she’s actually done it, and Helena genuinely doesn’t know where to go from here. 

She’s never given any thought to what she’d do once she killed the men who murdered her family in front of her. Maybe, she realizes, she never actually thought she’d make it this far.

It’s a damn depressing thought, but the more Helena considers it, the more she begins to believe it.

_I thought I’d be dead by now_. 

She almost laughs, incredulous and maybe a bit hysterical, and she claps a hand over her mouth before she can and tells herself quite sternly to get ahold of herself and get to work.

She stands and carries her plate to the sink.

\---

By the time the sun comes up, she’s cleaned the kitchen, swept the floor, scrubbed the bathroom, hand-washed her gear (and watched with interest as the water ran red with blood in the sink), cleaned and polished her crossbow, inventoried her weapons, and called Luca in Sicily.

When she tells him _it’s done, I’ve killed them all,_ he congratulates her with pride in his voice and asks her if she needs anything.

She tells him she needs more arrows, and by the time they’ve sorted out exactly which kinds she needs and how many, their conversation has returned to a typical level of business-like neutrality. 

He doesn’t ask if she wants to come back to Sicily, and Helena doesn’t ask if she can. When she hangs up, she feels — something. Sad, maybe? She doesn’t know. Nine years old is too young to grasp the full spectrum of human emotions, and her family’s death had pretty much marked the end of any emotional refinement beyond _‘channel everything into rage, and channel rage into revenge, and suppress anything that gets in the way.’_

It’s not important, anyway. 

The bodega on the corner opens at six in the morning every day, so she makes a grocery list. She’d tried going to the big supermarket on 44th and 11th when she’d first moved to Gotham, but she’d gotten as far as the cereal aisle before she’d given up — there were too many choices, and it was pissing her off. 

(Or maybe it had been another emotion entirely — either way, ‘pissed off’ was something she could deal with, so she’d decided to hate that grocery store and now shopped exclusively at the bodega, which only had one brand of anything if they had it at all. 

It was easier that way.)

\---

When she gets back from the bodega, Dinah’s standing outside her door, leaned against the wall with one eyebrow cocked.

“Um,” Helena says, very confused. “Hi?”

“Hey there.” Dinah eyes the shopping bags in her arms and smirks. “Need a hand?”

Helena clears her throat and tries very hard to figure out _what the hell is going on_. “I — sure. Yes. Thank — thank you.”

Dinah takes two of the bags, freeing Helena to dig out her keys. “No problem.” 

Helena can still feel Dinah’s eyes on her as she attempts to unlock the door, missing the keyhole the first time and wondering what she did to deserve this kind of torture.

_Probably all the homicide_ , she thinks ironically, and the door finally swings open. Thank God.

Dinah follows her in, looking around the apartment with curiosity and eventually setting the grocery bags on the counter. They unload the groceries in silence for long enough that Helena feels ready to snap from frustration. Finally, Dinah surveys the food-laden countertop and remarks, "Jesus, you must have the blandest diet in the world." 

That does it. "Did you come here just to mock my food, or —"

Dinah laughs, because of course she does, and raises her hands in mock surrender. "Okay, okay, damn. Remember what Renee said in the diner, about cleaning up Gotham?"

"Yes," Helena replies slowly. It was yesterday, of course she remembers.

"And we worked really well together taking down Sionis, right?"

"Yes."

Dinah leans forward, a gleam in her eyes. "So what if we kept doing it?"

Helena stares at her. "Kept doing…"

"Kicking ass and taking names! You, me, Renee — Harley if she wants, but it doesn't seem like her style. I mean, I'm out of a job, and so is Renee, and hey — if you don't have anything else to do, then why not?"

Helena considers this. She does not, in fact, have anything else to do. She also has an abundance of weapons, money, and time, and a significant lack of purpose, currently. And even though she's always worked alone, Helena has to admit — it might be nice to be part of a team.

So she shrugs as nonchalantly as possible and says, "Sure, alright." 

"Great!" Dinah grins at her, and Helena smiles tentatively back despite herself. "Here's my number —" She scribbles it onto a scrap of paper and thrusts it at Helena. "Text me so I have your number, okay? I'm gonna go talk to Renee, see if I can get her on board." She heads to the door, then stops and points at Helena. "And I mean it about the groceries. Mix it up a little, girl, variety's the spice of life!"

"Okay," Helena says faintly, and Dinah sends her a smirk over her shoulder and slips out the door. 

Helena diligently applies herself to the task of putting away the remaining groceries, and when she finishes, she grabs her phone and adds Dinah to her contact list, bringing the number of contacts up to a grand total of five. She hesitates over the message, typing and backspacing until she finally gets fed up with herself and just sends, _This is Helena_. 

Within moments, the phone buzzes, the screen lighting up with Dinah's reply: _thx!! :)_

Helena likes the sideways smile, so she sends one back and finds that she's smiling too. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm planning to write a total of five chapters, probably ending up at around 10k words. That could definitely change, so we'll see how it goes! I hope to update once a week at minimum.  
> Let me know what you think! Thanks for reading! :)


	2. lift your head and look out the window

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoilers for season three of _Downton Abbey_. Not sure how that happened, but consider yourself warned.

Unsurprisingly, Renee is on board with Dinah's idea, and soon they're the Birds of Prey. Dinah came up with the name, and Renee had scoffed at it at first, although Helena guessed that her initial disdain was more for show than out of sincere derision. They have a warehouse as their base of operations, and a weapons cache, and frequent meetings about their next targets. They even have roles: Renee finds new scumbags for them to hunt down, Helena tracks them, and Dinah plans the actual ambush. It works, a fact which somewhat surprises them all; their first few ops are a bit clumsy, but overall, they settle nicely into their new rhythm.

In the meantime, Helena's coming to realize just how out of touch she is with the rest of the world. She doesn't get any of Dinah's or Renee's pop culture references, and her American slang is more than a bit rusty. She's pretty sure that the last time she watched a movie of her own volition was when she was nine.

In other words, Helena is twenty-four years old and has no idea what she even _likes._

So she turns to the Internet. 

It's easy enough to find 'articles' consisting only of TV show and movie recommendations, so she selects a list at random — titled "Must-See TV of the 2010s" — and begins steadily working through it. Most of the dramas are too dark for her taste; even if they usually pale in comparison to the shit she's been though, Helena doesn't have much desire to spend the little time she isn't beating up criminals watching depressing television. She likes _Downton Abbey_ , and _The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel_ , and even _Parks and Recreation_ (though it had taken her until the second season for her to find it actually funny), because they make her laugh sometimes, and because it’s easy to become engrossed in the characters' easy humor and crime-free lives. 

(However, she is _extremely_ pissed when she gets to season three of _Downton_ and people start fucking _dying_ left and right. When Matthew dies mere episodes after Sybil's death, Helena hollers "what the _fuck_ " at the television loud enough that her upstairs neighbor bangs on the floor and yells at her to shut up.

"Fuck _off,_ " she yells right back, and is so enraged that she doesn't turn on the TV for a week, instead glaring at it every time she sees it as if that will somehow change the storyline.

She goes on a mission a few days later, still in a foul mood over the matter, and Dinah notices, because of _course_ she does.

"You okay, H?" she asks, teasing on the surface but with a hint of concern underlying her words.

"I'm _fine_ ," she grits out, and if her punches land especially hard during the fight, well, that's nobody's business but her own.)

Once she's established her taste in television, she thinks it's time to move on to the area of food. Of course she loves Italian and Sicilian food, and there are plenty of ethnic takeout places near her apartment, but Helena recalls Dinah's advice and decides to take it to heart. 

Which is how she finds herself at the same supermarket she'd once tried and failed to shop at, staring at a wall of cereal boxes and trying to make sense of them all. Minutes pass as she scrutinizes them, and she's ready to just grab a box at random and move on when a little boy darts in front of her, grabs a white and blue box, and run back to his mother (who's watching Helena with no small amount of suspicion, which seems unfair; after all, she's made sure that her clothes are free of any lingering bloodstains, and she'd even skipped the purple and black eyeshadow). Helena attempts a smile, and once the boy and his mother have moved onto the next aisle, she picks up a box of the same cereal the boy had selected. 

_Cinnamon Toast Crunch!_ the box proclaims, and she frowns at it. She starts to turn it over and check the nutritional information box, then decides it’s probably wisest not to know.

By the time she makes it to the register, her cart is full — Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and Pop-Tarts, and Cheetos, and Oreos, and various other classic American staples that she’d always dismissed as processed garbage, in addition to her usual grocery basics, like frozen chicken breasts and brown rice and pasta. Helena half-expects the cashier to make a comment about her purchases, but evidently it’s nothing out of the ordinary, as he doesn’t bat an eye. 

Helena isn’t sure what that says about Gotham.

Over the course of the next two weeks, she samples it all and draws some conclusions.

Conclusion number one: Cheetos, and by extension any cheese-flavored items coated with that artificial orange dust, are disgusting.

Conclusion two: Pop-Tarts are far too sweet, and so Helena dismisses them as inedible.

Conclusion three: Oreos have no reason to be as good as they are, and after she eats a sleeve of them in one sitting without even thinking about it, Helena decides that she would be better off without them in the pantry. 

Conclusion four, and the most important one, is this: Cinnamon Toast Crunch is _incredible_. 

Helena likes having a favorite food, even if it's breakfast cereal primarily marketed to six-year-olds. 

She thinks that she might be done with this quest of self-discovery, until Renee stops by one day with a lead on their newest case, looks around the apartment with her eyebrows raised, and remarks, “Pretty fuckin’ bleak in here.”

“What the hell did you just say?” Helena steps forward, and even though she’s sure her stormy expression could scare away a lesser woman, Renee looks unimpressed. 

“You need some decorations. Paintings and plants and shit. Get a cactus, they’re all the rage.”

“A cactus,” Helena repeats flatly.

“Yes, a fucking cactus. Jesus, don’t bite my head off, it’s just a suggestion. We gonna talk about my lead or are you just gonna stand there looking pissy?”

Once Renee leaves, Helena looks around her apartment critically. She had considered it to be perfectly fine: clean, tidy, containing all necessary appliances. The Huntress needed nothing more in a living space.

Helena Bertinelli, on the other hand…

So she turns to the Internet once more. Online shopping, she’s discovering, is an incredible thing. 

The problem is, Helena doesn’t really know where to start. She’s pretty much shit at interior decorating, as she discovers after a mere fifteen minutes searching Amazon for a nice area rug, and when she takes an irritatingly cheerful quiz to determine her ‘decorating style,’ her result is ‘industrial chic.’

She has no idea what that even fucking means.

In the end, she settles for a navy-blue rug with a geometric lattice pattern, matching curtains, a pair of lamps, and some tasteful botanical wall prints. As an afterthought, she buys a cactus, too, just to tell Renee that she did. Helena clicks the _place order_ button before she can second-guess herself any further and closes her laptop, running a hand through her hair and sighing. 

Decorating is hard work. 

It’s worth it, though; once her orders have arrived and she’s spent an afternoon meticulously setting it all up, she finds that she rather likes the look of it all, and a pleased grin tugs at the corners of her mouth as she surveys her handiwork. 

The cactus goes on the windowsill, and Helena devotes herself to researching the care and keeping of _Rebutia muscula_ , more commonly known as orange snowball cactus. She thinks it’s getting ready to flower, and she examines it every day to determine its progress.

The best part, though, is this.

Dinah stops by one day, the morning after a successful mission, and when she steps inside, she lets out a low whistle. “Looks like you’ve been busy.”

Helena twists her hands together before crossing her arms. _Be casual_ , she tells herself. “Um. Yep. Do you — what do you think?”

She has no idea why she’s so goddamn _nervous_. It’s _stupid,_ and she _hates_ it.

Dinah’s eyes land on the cactus on the windowsill, and she smiles. “Huh,” she says almost inaudibly, then looks at Helena, still smiling widely. “It looks great, H,” she tells her sincerely. “I like the cactus. Prickly, just like you, right?” She bumps Helena on the shoulder as she walks past, casting a grin her way to make sure Helena knows she’s joking. 

“Right,” Helena manages, and smiles back tentatively.

Maybe she isn’t so shit at interior decorating after all. 

\---

When Helena gets to the warehouse for their weekly training session, Dinah's already there, dressed in her gear and perched on the card table they've pushed against a wall. Two weeks have passed since Helena’s adventures in home decorating, and to her delight, the cactus seems to be thriving in its new home.

"Hey," Dinah greets her. "Renee will be here soon, she said to start without her. Want to warm up, spar a little before she gets here?"

"Sure," Helena says, dropping her duffel bag in a corner and tugging on her gloves. It's become routine to practice like this; though Renee and Dinah make up for their lack of formal martial arts training in sheer determination, the three of them have decided that it might benefit them to learn some tricks from Helena. 

She meets Dinah, who's settled into a fighting stance, in the middle of the floor. "Ready?" 

"Ready."

They start off simple, circling each other for a moment before Dinah throws the first jab. Helena dodges it and sweeps her palm up, but Dinah blocks the motion neatly; Helena's momentarily impressed, but doesn't let herself get distracted. The two of them weave and dodge, parry and spin, and Helena feels herself smiling. _This_ is what she loves: blood pumping in her veins, dipping and whirling in a vicious dance, the hyper-awareness of adrenaline and excitement sharpening the world.

Dinah almost lands a lucky jab; her knuckles graze Helena’s side as Helena spins on her heel to avoid the blow. Her surprise must show on her face, because Dinah laughs and tosses her hair, tilting her head.

“C’mon, Katniss, is this the best you can do?” she teases, and Helena grits her teeth and _focuses_. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Renee enter, watching their fight without a word.

Faster and faster come their blows, never landing hard enough to cause injury, and Helena almost manages to get a hold of Dinah's wrist long enough to twist her arm back and end the match. 

Almost.

Dinah twists away, and their eyes meet for the barest second. Dinah's eyes gleam bright and fierce, and all Helena can think is — 

_She's beautiful._

The thought comes unbidden, and yet it unbalances her, freezes her completely for half a second — long enough that she doesn't even register the incoming blow.

Dinah's palm collides with Helena's nose. Stars burst in her vision, and she tastes blood running hot over her mouth. Helena reels backward, one hand clasped against her face. She doesn't think it's broken, but _damn,_ does it hurt. She gasps in air, trying to catch her breath.

Dinah's at her shoulder. "Jesus, Helena, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to —"

"'S fine," Helena breaks in. “My fault, I wasn’t — paying attention.”

Renee has joined them by now, and she peers up at Helena’s face. “I don’t think it’s broken, let me —” She reaches up to probe at Helena’s face, which, _ow_ , and also very annoying. Helena hisses irritably and swats her hand away. 

“You need an ice pack,” Renee says.

“No, I’m fine.”

“That wasn’t a question, dumbass. Dinah?”

“Yeah — I’ll get one.” She heads over to the first aid kit, which is really more like a first aid closet, and starts digging around. 

Helena can feel Renee’s eyes boring into her, and she shifts uncomfortably, dabbing at her nose with the side of her hand. 

“The hell was that?” Renee demands in an undertone. “You were both doing great, and then you just — froze.”

“It was nothing.”

Renee scoffs. “You call _this_ nothing? You’re bleeding all over the damn place.”

“I’ve had worse.”

“That’s not my point, and you know it.” She leans in close — as close as she can get with their six-inch height difference — and jabs a finger at Helena. “Get your shit together. You freeze up in a fight, you’re gonna get more than a bloody nose, you hear?”

“I _know_ that,” Helena snaps. 

“Then don’t let it happen again.” She steps back, but her gaze is still locked on Helena’s. 

Dinah approaches, ice pack in hand, and looks between them. “Everything okay?”

“Peachy,” Renee says dryly. 

Dinah places her hand on the back of Helena’s head. “Bend over a bit, okay? And, let me —” She positions the ice pack carefully against the bridge of Helena’s nose. “There.”

“Thanks,” Helena mumbles, and tries not to lean into the touch. 

“Of course.” Dinah steps back and claps her hands. “Alright, Huntress, you’re on the bench for today. Ready to go, Renee?”

“As long as you don’t break my face, sure.”

Helena obligingly points out the flaws in their form throughout their practice and works with them on a strategy to take down this week’s gang of Gotham scumbags, but her thoughts keep circling back to the fight, and to that sudden revelation.

 _She’s beautiful_.

Helena is completely, utterly screwed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's a bit longer than the first, and the following chapters will likely be about this long too (if not longer).  
> Thank you all for reading, leaving kudos, and commenting! Feedback absolutely makes my day!


	3. and the night will come

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up for content: mentions of child endangerment (it's resolved without any injury), vomiting, and violence. Definitely nothing worse than what happens in the movie.

It’s fine, Helena decides. What she’s feeling is surely only friendship. It’s not like she has any actual experience with having friends, anyway; maybe all friends get overwhelmed by each other’s beauty and freeze up from time to time.

She manages to convince herself that this must be the case for nearly a month, and it seems to work pretty well. The Birds of Prey are gaining a reputation among the city’s criminal underbelly, and it seems like their campaign to clean up Gotham is having a sustained effect. The newspapers are filled with speculation about the identities of these new heroes; one benefit to having been presumed dead for seventeen years and counting, Helena discovers, is that nobody ever suspects that she’s the Huntress. 

One day at the beginning of November, they’re taking a break from training at the warehouse; Dinah’s scrolling absently through the #BirdsOfPrey tag on Twitter when she suddenly gasps. 

Helena jolts to attention. “Something wrong?” Her mind jumps automatically to fight mode, and she only relaxes when Dinah says, “No, no, look!”

Dinah holds her phone out to Helena, and Renee leans in next to her to peer at the screen. It’s a picture — several pictures, actually — of groups of little girls dressed up for Halloween.

They’re dressed as _them,_ Helena realizes — the Birds of Prey. With miniature plastic crossbows and faux-leather jackets and kid-sized boots. 

“Adorable, right?” 

“It’s pretty cute,” Renee concedes, trying to sound nonchalant but mostly failing. 

Now they’re both expecting Helena to react, and she swallows and tries for a smile. “Wow,” she says lamely, and it’s evidently a satisfactory answer, because Dinah turns her attention to the task of finding the best costumes and pointing them out. Helena reacts as needed, following Renee’s example, and tries to ignore the unsettling tightness in her chest.

Because the only thing Helena can think of when she sees those pictures is the blood on her hands, and even though she doesn’t regret the choices she’s made, there’s something fundamentally _wrong_ about little girls dressed up to look like her. She doesn’t think of herself as a hero; she’s just doing what needs to be done, and that’s that. The thought that little girls across the city might see her as — as _admirable_ , as a role model, is strange, even disturbing. Helena knows better than most that children shouldn’t be thinking about crime or vengeance; she vividly remembers the first weeks of her training with Sal and Luca, how they’d teach her to fight in the daytime, and when night fell, she’d let silent tears roll down her face.

Helena hadn’t wanted revenge when she was nine years old. She’d only wanted her family back. 

Eventually, Dinah runs out of pictures, and Renee wanders away to find a bottle of water, leaving just the two of them. 

Helena’s about to make an excuse and find something to busy herself with until they’re all ready to resume training when Dinah lays a hand on her arm.

“Hey.” Dinah looks at Helena; her brown eyes are warm and soft, yet intent, and Helena has to look away after a moment, feeling as though Dinah can see right through her. “Everything alright? You seem a little on edge.”

“What? Oh, yeah — yeah, I’m good.” Helena brings her gaze back up to meet Dinah’s and attempts a smile; she thinks it comes out wrong, though, because Dinah huffs out a soft laugh and shakes her head.

“You’re kind of a terrible liar, you know that?” Before Helena can bristle at the remark, Dinah sighs and squeezes Helena’s elbow lightly. “Listen, if — if you ever need to talk, I’m here, alright?”

Helena doesn’t trust herself to speak, doesn’t trust herself not to blurt out everything from _I’m pretty sure I’m not completely okay_ to _I don’t know if what I feel for you is just friendship_ to _the thought of losing you scares me more than anything else_. 

So she nods and casts her eyes downward once more.

“Okay,” Dinah says, voice tinged with fondness and something that sounds a little sad, and when she drops her hand from Helena’s arm and walks off to find Renee, Helena feels her absence like a chill and wonders if she should have said something more.

\---

Winter creeps ever-closer, sending a frigid ache deep into Helena’s bones and painting Gotham in tones of gray. Years in Sicily have made her accustomed to mild winters, and so her displeasure with the falling temperatures and newfound habit of bundling up to keep warm become fodder for constant teasing from Renee and Dinah. 

Their latest target is a human-trafficking ring cloaked in shadow and fear, and they’ve been working for weeks to get enough leads to piece together a plan of action. It’s frustrating work, filled with dead ends and false leads despite Renee’s efforts to shake down every contact she can find. Between the case, and the cold, and the fact that Pino’s birthday is approaching — he would have been twenty-one, Helena thinks, and the thought never fails to drive a knife into her heart — she’s on edge, and she feels like a live wire waiting to ignite.

Finally, _finally,_ her phone rings one evening as Helena’s cleaning the kitchen after dinner. It’s Dinah.

“There’s a trade going down near the docks in three hours. How soon can you be at the warehouse?”

“Twenty minutes.”

“See you then.” She hangs up, and Helena drops the phone on the counter and leaves the dishes to soak in the sink. 

She makes it to the warehouse in sixteen minutes; when she enters, Renee and Dinah are already suited up, pacing across the floor. 

“What’s the plan?” Helena asks in lieu of greeting, and they tell her. 

The gang they’ve been tracking is meeting a buyer to make a trade — cash in exchange for human cargo. It’s an incredible opportunity, the chance to take down the entire trafficking operation. 

The only problem is this: they have to get the victims to safety.

“That’s our top priority,” Renee reminds them grimly. “And we have no idea how many there will be, or what condition they’ll be in. Dinah, you’re our best bet; if we can get the civilians to cover their ears, you can do your thing and hopefully knock most of these guys out — assuming that they aren’t wise to that trick already.”

Dinah nods, jaw set in determination. “Got it.” She turns to Helena. “We’ll need you in there first. Get in, find the victims, tell them to plug their ears, and get them the hell out. We’ll tip off the police, get emergency services on the scene hopefully by the time we’re finished.”

It’s a gamble, but they’ve pulled off riskier plans, and so Helena nods. She already can feel the rush of adrenaline, the pulse of her heartbeat loud in her ears; she’s itching for a fight — for _this_ fight. 

They get to the warehouse early; Helena takes up a position on a catwalk overlooking the floor and prepares her crossbow. Renee and Dinah are stationed in the alley out back, waiting for Helena’s signal. The minutes stretch, but Helena’s no stranger to waiting, and she stays alert despite the silence.

Renee isn’t quite as patient; over their comms, Helena can hear her muttering curses and guesses that she’s pacing back and forth to expend nervous energy and probably driving Dinah up a wall in the process. 

The buyers get there first; it’s a group of four men, and they spread throughout the warehouse talking in low tones. Helena’s fingers itch, and she has to suppress the vicious desire to take them out one-by-one before the others even arrive. _Stick to the plan_ , she reminds herself; they’d have no shot at the traffickers and no chance to save the victims if she goes off-script. 

So she clenches her jaw and waits. 

After an eternity, the sound of footsteps alerts her of the gang’s arrival. Helena counts as they file into the warehouse: six total, two of whom are apparently tasked with keeping the victims in check. 

It’s dark, but Helena can tally roughly a dozen innocents, jostled roughly by their guards. Something’s off, though; she squints, tracking the group’s movements, and it hits her like a punch to the gut.

They’re _children._

It takes all of her restraint not to audibly swear; instead, she presses a finger to her earpiece and speaks as quietly as she can. “Change of plans.”

 _“What?”_ Renee sounds murderous.

“It’s kids. The victims, they’re — they’re children. Younger than Cass, probably.”

 _“Goddamnit.”_ Dinah, now. _“I’ve never done the cry with young kids around, I don’t know what it’ll do. I don’t think we can risk it.”_

Helena bites her lip. They don’t have much time, from the looks of it. “Alright, you guys come in at the north entrance, draw their attention. I’ll get as many as I can from above.”

_“And the kids?”_

“Leave them to me, I’ll get them out.”

There’s a pause, and then Renee speaks. _“Thirty seconds. Get ready, Huntress.”_

She’s ready. 

As soon as Dinah and Renee come in, Helena starts picking the men off — she drops four in the commotion, and before she’s spotted, she drops down to the warehouse floor, right in front of the kids. The guards have been drawn away into the brawl, as she’d hoped, but she doesn’t have much time before they spot her. 

“Eyes on me,” she tells the kids, and _god,_ none of them are older than fourteen; they shouldn’t be seeing this. “I’m gonna get you out of here.”

_“Helena!”_

The men have noticed her; two of them are headed her way, and she aims her crossbow and fires before turning back to the kids and herding them toward the door, out into the alley. Sirens wail out in the distance, and for a moment, Helena lets herself breathe, thinking they’ve won.

Then a cry rings out, and she whirls around to see one of the traffickers, eye blackened and blood spilling from a gash on his head, holding a little boy — no more than six years old, eyes wide with fear — by the collar with one hand. In the other is a gun. 

“The Crossbow Killer?” he sneers, baring bloodied teeth. “What an honor. How about you put your hands up, and this little guy —” he shakes the boy roughly — “doesn’t get hurt?”

Helena’s rooted to the spot, and then she simply says, “Close your eyes.”

“The hell did you say?”

“I wasn’t fucking talking to you,” she answers, and she’s on him in a flash.

Helena drops, diving across the pavement to shatter his kneecap with a well-placed kick. He falls with a scream of agony, and she tears the gun from his hand and slams it into his temple. 

_Pino_ , she thinks; she remembers her little brother trembling beside her as they looked down the barrel of a gun, and her anger spills over. She hits him again and again; she doesn’t stop when she draws blood, or when she feels bone shatter; she could hit him forever, because he deserves it and so much more, again again again —

“Helena, stop.”

It’s Dinah.

She stops. 

Helena stands and flexes her fingers, and her gaze lands on the little boy. He’s curled against the wall, and his eyes are tightly closed, thank God.

“Hey,” she says softly, crouching beside him. “You’re safe now, _patatino_. Take my hand.”

His fingers curl around hers, and she stands with him, angling her body to block his view of the trafficker lying bloody and motionless on the pavement. Helena walks him to the mouth of the alley, within sight of the ambulance, and points to the paramedics who are tending to the other children. “Go with them, okay? They’ll help you.”

He nods, his dark eyes wide, and she places a hand on his back and nudges him forward. Her touch leaves behind bloody marks on his shirt. Helena watches until he’s joined the others, and when she knows he’s safe, she slips back into the alley. 

Dinah meets her halfway, and to Helena’s relief, she doesn’t seem badly injured — a few cuts and bruises, nothing more. “We’re meeting Renee back at my place,” Dinah says simply, and when she starts walking, Helena follows. 

She's numb in every sense, barely registering her surroundings as they walk the city streets. Her mind is stuck in a loop; all she can think of is that little boy, his dark eyes so much like Pino's, the feeling of his hand in hers. Helena thinks of little girls dressed like killers and her bloody handprint on the boy's shirt and scarlet spray across a drawing room, her mother's blood on her face and a matchbox car tucked against her palm like a lifeline, blood on her hands on her face on the walls and Pino —

"Helena?" 

She's in Dinah's apartment, and Dinah's looking at her, brow creased with worry.

Helena drops her gaze and sees a drop of blood fall from her fingertips and land on the linoleum, forming a perfect crimson circle.

For some reason, that's the last straw. Helena bolts past Dinah and barely makes it to the bathroom in time to drop to the floor, knees smacking painfully against the tile, and retch into the toilet.

 _This is new_ , Helena thinks in a daze before she’s hit by another wave of nausea, bile burning in her throat, and her mind goes fuzzy.

She isn’t sure how much time passes before the world comes back into focus. Her eyes are stinging, and she’s pretty sure her nose is running, which is kind of disgusting. Helena vaguely recalls that the same thing would happen when she would get sick as a kid; she hated throwing up so much that she’d cry as she did it, despite her mother’s desperate attempts to stop her, saying _crying only makes it worse,_ tesoro _, hush now_. 

Apparently she hadn’t outgrown that particular habit. 

Something tugs at her hair, and she stiffens before a voice filters into her awareness.

“ — okay? Helena? You done?”

She nods, her throat still feeling too raw for words, and sits back. Dinah runs her had through Helena’s hair one more time — Helena realizes that Dinah had been holding her hair back for her as she vomited, and the thought makes her feel both warm and horrendously embarrassed — and rests her palm lightly against the back of Helena’s neck, her thumb rubbing light circles against the skin. Her touch is cool, grounding, and Helena slows her breathing. In and out. She lifts her hand to wipe at her face, but remembers that it’s covered in mostly-dried blood and decides against it. 

“Here,” Dinah says softly, passing her a Kleenex.

She takes it. “Thanks,” she tells Dinah, her voice hoarse. She swipes at her eyes and nose, drops the tissue in the toilet bowl, and flushes the toilet. 

Silence stretches between them, and Helena finally clears her throat and asks, “Where’s Renee?”

“Went to get takeout. She should be here in a few minutes.” Dinah’s looking at her, and Helena drops her gaze and nods. She makes to stand, but Dinah puts a hand on her wrist.

“Helena. Talk to me. And don’t just say you’re okay, because it’s pretty clear to me that you’re not.”

Damn. She’s not getting out of this. Helena nods, then says, choosing her words carefully, “It hasn’t been, um. It hasn’t been kids before, except for Cass.”

She could have left it at that, but Dinah’s hand is still on her wrist, and for some reason that makes her want to keep talking. 

“And.” She swallows. “And Pino’s birthday is in a few days, so I’ve been a little on edge.”

“Pino?”

“My little brother.” Helena forces the words out; she can’t remember the last time she ever talked about him — probably never, come to to think of it. “He would have turned twenty-one this year.”

Dinah makes a soft noise, all sympathy and understanding, and that convinces Helena. She needs to _tell_ her, tell her everything she’s been feeling ever since the five of them took down Sionis. 

She takes a deep breath. “And there’s other things, too.”

Dinah tilts her head. “Like what?”

 _This is it,_ Helena thinks, and opens her mouth —

— and the apartment door slams shut.

“You people better hurry up if you want any of the General Tso’s. Where the hell —” Renee appears in the doorway, arms laden with takeout, and takes in the sight of them both sitting on the bathroom floor. “Oh, Jesus, I don’t even want to know. Helena, you look like shit.”

“Gee, thanks,” Helena drawls flatly.

“Take a shower, why don’t you.”

“I’ll save you some General Tso’s,” Dinah promises, squeezing her wrist before standing and offering a hand. 

Helena takes it, wincing at the stiffness in her joints. Renee is still watching them, eyebrows raised, and she turns away. Helena hears her muttering under her breath, sounding exasperated as ever, and Dinah rolls her eyes and smiles at Helena. 

“She’s so predictable.”

“I heard that,” Renee calls crankily. 

“Anyway. Towels are in the cupboard. I’ll grab you some clothes. And Helena?” Her voice turns serious.

“Yeah?”

“What else were you going to say?”

 _Oh_. Helena forces a smile and lies, “It’s nothing, really.”

“If you’re sure.” Dinah steps away. “I’ll go get something for you to wear.”

“Thanks,” Helena says, but Dinah's already gone. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fight scenes are hard, y'all.  
> We're getting close to the end - either one or two chapters to finish it out, depending on how long it ends up. After that, I'd love to write more for this fandom and pairing, so comment if you have any prompts or suggestions! I have a few thoughts of my own, but it's always nice to get some new ideas.  
> Thank you so much for reading and leaving feedback! Writing this has been such a great experience, and the positive reception has meant the world to me!


	4. stay that way for the rest of the day

They're all too tired to talk much while they eat, and they have an unspoken agreement not to discuss any mission until they've all gotten a good night sleep. Dinah always offers up her sofa after a late night, but Helena's never actually accepted before — typically, she has her bike and can get back to her place in a matter of minutes. Tonight, though, when Dinah tells Renee and Helena, "You can stay the night, there's plenty of room," and Helena prepares to demur, Renee steps in.

"You're not walking home at this time of night. Get your ass to bed, Killer."

Helena knows better than to argue with Renee. "I can take the sofa. Or the floor."

Renee rolls her eyes, and Dinah interjects, "I'm not going to make you sleep on the floor. There's plenty of room in my bed. I think I can keep my hands to myself for one night." She winks, tired humor coloring her tone, and Helena nods.

"Alright. Um. Thanks." Helena's pretty sure she's blushing, which is idiotic, because Dinah flirts with everyone like that; it doesn't mean a thing. 

When Dinah goes into the bathroom to change and Renee's already dozing on the sofa, Helena enters the bedroom. She's only caught glimpses of it before now; the walls are painted a pleasant daffodil-yellow and adorned with art prints — some of them, Helena thinks, might be Dinah Lance originals, pencil sketches and watercolors and fiery acrylic canvases. It's nice, she decides: it feels homey and lived-in, comfortable in a way that can't be achieved through store-bought decorations. 

She sits gingerly on the edge of the bed, then lies down on her side atop the covers before she can lose her nerve. She can't remember the last time she shared a bed with anyone — certainly not as an adult — and she doesn't trust herself not to sprawl out in her sleep. 

When her head hits the pillow, Helena realizes she's more tired than she'd thought. Her eyelids are heavy, and she curls her fingers against the comforter, twisting the fabric in her grasp. 

She inhales the mingled scents of coconut and sage and something she can't quite place. _It smells like her_ , Helena thinks sleepily, and she nudges her face deeper into the pillow and drifts off.

\---

Helena wakes gradually, sleep fading slowly away as she stirs and opens her eyes. She's still on top of the comforter, but someone — Dinah, no doubt — had covered her with a blanket after she had fallen asleep.

Suddenly Helena's wide awake and frozen in place. _Dinah_. She strains her hearing, and when she can't detect the sound of breathing from the other side of the mattress, she turns to look. 

It's empty. 

Helena should be relieved that Dinah's awake already, but she finds herself — disappointed, almost. She vaguely recalls the warm, comforting safety that came from the knowledge that Dinah lay next to her, a safety that had lulled her into a deeper, more restful sleep than Helena's had in weeks. 

Dinah's and Renee's voices filter faintly through the closed door, as does the scent of fresh coffee, and that's enough to convince Helena to get out of bed. She runs a hand through her hair and vaguely hopes that it's not too disheveled, then pads into the living area. 

"Morning, sunshine," Dinah greets her with a grin. 

"Hi," she responds, taking the cup of coffee Dinah offers her. "Thanks." She sits at the table across from Renee, who grunts something that might pass as a greeting. She's holding her coffee mug like it's the only thing tethering her to the world of the living. 

Dinah joins them after a moment, placing a plate of toast in the center of the table and snapping her fingers in front of Renee's face. "Hey, Montoya, wake up. This ain't the bar, sit up straight."

"Oh, fuck off," Renee grumbles, but straightens enough to appease Dinah. "Stop hogging the toast, Bertinelli."

"I took one piece. Don't be dramatic." Helena slides the plate across the table. "Here, all yours."

"You're a real ray of sunshine in the morning, Renee," Dinah tells her, and is rewarded with a scowl. 

They eat their toast in companionable silence — it's the kind of domesticity that Helena's relearned and grown to enjoy over the past few months — and when Renee's drained her mug, she stands with a sigh, looking marginally more human. "I'm gonna head out." She cuffs Dinah lightly on the shoulder as she passes to place the mug in the sink. "Thanks for breakfast, Canary."

Dinah raises her mug. "Anytime."

"See you later," Helena adds, and Renee waves and shuts the door behind her.

And then it's just the two of them. 

Helena nibbles at the remains of her toast, and Dinah drums her nails against her coffee mug. Helena's working up the nerve to gracefully take her leave when Dinah clears her throat. 

"You drool in your sleep, you know," she says without preamble, eyes downcast and face serious, and Helena almost chokes on her toast. 

"I, uh —" She coughs and thinks she must be blushing scarlet, judging by the way her cheeks are burning. "I'm really sorry, I —" 

And then she sees that Dinah's _laughing._

"The look on your _face,_ H, I've never seen you turn that color — I'm kidding, I'm kidding, you don't drool —"

Helena punched her on the arm, as lightly as she can. "Asshole," she mutters, but she's fighting a smile. This is what she loves — sunlight, and easy laughter, and the way Dinah's eyes flash with mischief. It overwhelms her momentarily, and she smiles into her coffee mug as she swallows the last lukewarm dregs. 

"Come on, you love me," Dinah teases, and the shining bubble of the moment pops.

Helena swallows hard, her throat aching, and smiles. "Yeah, whatever," she answers, hoping that Dinah can't hear the strain in her voice. "I — I should probably —"

"Yeah, of course." Dinah rises, grabbing the now-empty toast plate and heading for the sink. "Any plans for today?"

"Gotta fetch my bike." She'd left it at the warehouse the previous evening. 

"Thrilling," Dinah says dryly. Helena reaches past her to put her mug in the sink, and before she can pull back, Dinah turns around to face her, leaning back against the edge of the counter. "You sure you're alright?"

Helena flushes again, embarrassed at herself, knowing that Sal and Luca would have dismissed her behavior last night as _weakness, Helena, and you are not weak_. "I'm sorry about that, I —" 

"Hey, no, don't do that." Dinah's tone is firm. "You don't have to be sorry, alright? We all have rough nights." 

_Not me,_ Helena thinks, but she's beginning to realize that that's just wishful thinking. Harley would probably have some fancy psychological term for it, but she's not there, so it doesn't matter anyway. "Yeah, of course," she answers automatically. 

"Okay." Dinah looks at her, then says, "Come here."

Helena hesitates, so Dinah steps forward instead and pulls her into a tight hug. It's short, and Helena wishes that she'd had the presence of mind to return the embrace, draw it out for just a few seconds more, because she can't remember the last time anyone had hugged her. 

It's pretty fucking depressing, actually. 

Dinah draws back, leaving her hands on Helena’s shoulders and looking her intently in the eyes. Even at arms-length, Helena feels overwhelmed by Dinah’s closeness, and her heart’s practically beating out of her chest. 

“I’m glad you’re on our team, H. You’re a good friend, you know?” Dinah squeezes her shoulders, looking at Helena with a fondness that suffuses her with an inexplicable warmth, tightening her chest and making her breath hitch.

And then Helena makes a mistake.

One moment, she's looking Dinah in the eye, but for a second — for a single goddamn second — she finds herself dropping her gaze, catching sight of full lips quirked in a crooked grin, before looking back up to meet Dinah’s eyes. Helena feels unbalanced, flushed and nervous, and there’s a confused crease in Dinah’s brow, a shade of uncertainty in her eyes. 

Shit. _Shit._ Helena’s fucked up, she’s sure of it; the warmth inside her has curdled into something hard and cold and fearful, because Helena can’t lose this, and she’ll never forgive herself if she ruins one of the only friendships she’s ever had because she’s acting like a lovestruck schoolgirl who can’t keep her eyes to herself.

So she pulls herself together. 

“Thanks,” she says. _Casual, casual_. As though nothing happened. “And thanks for letting me crash here.” 

Dinah shrugs. “Anytime. That’s what friends are for. Hey, drive safe, alright? It’s supposed to snow later.”

“Of fucking course it is,” Helena mutters, because that’s exactly what she needs right now. To her delight, Dinah laughs, and a hint of the warmth from earlier bubbles up again. 

She’d go to the ends of the earth to make Dinah laugh. 

_Friends,_ Helena reminds herself as she steps onto the street under gathering steel-gray clouds. It’s more than she’d ever hoped to have; surely it will be enough. It _will._

It has to be. 

\---

Evidently, Gotham’s criminals have collectively decided to take a holiday until after New Year’s, because the Birds find themselves without any serious missions in the weeks leading up to Christmas. They still patrol most nights, keeping an eye on the city, but they often split up to cover more ground, and so Helena sees little of Renee and Dinah outside of the brief training sessions Renee insists on continuing to keep them in sync. 

Helena doesn’t like it one bit. 

She’s accustomed to solitude, or at least she had been before she fell in with Harley Quinn and the Birds of Prey. Now, though, she’s grown used to the company of Dinah and Renee, and occasionally even Harley and Cass, who appear at the most random times, wreak well-intentioned havoc, and then zip back to the East End leaving clouds of glitter in their wake. 

Helena’s not quite lonely, in those weeks, but it’s a close thing. 

And she has a lot of time to think, too. Ever since that morning at Dinah’s, when Helena had vowed not to jeopardize their friendship, she’s wondered if she’s been as good a friend to Dinah as Dinah has been to her. After all, Dinah had been the one to show up at her apartment and ask her to join their team, giving Helena a newfound purpose in life. Dinah had encouraged her to explore the world, starting at the grocery store of all places; she’d challenged Helena in their training sessions and made her feel like a valued part of the team. Dinah had held her hair back when she was sick and covered her with a blanket while she slept, had made her toast and hugged her in the kitchen in the watery light of the winter sun. 

Helena can’t recall ever doing anything in return, and that just feels wrong. 

She considers asking Renee for advice on what she can do for Dinah, but something holds her back — the knowledge that Renee can see through anyone’s bullshit, mostly, and Helena isn’t fully comfortable with the all-too-real possibility of being confronted with Renee’s trademark bluntness on a topic that’s so important and sensitive. 

So back to Google she goes. 

_How to demonstrate affection for —_

No. Too formal.

_How to show someone you love —_

The results are all focused on romance, and Helena certainly doesn’t need _that_ on her mind right now.

_How to be a good friend_ , she finally searches, and taps on the first result that pops up. 

It’s a list, almost sickeningly cheerful. The first few items make Helena roll her eyes — _buy them flowers! Write them a nice note! Draw them a picture!_ She almost returns to the search results, but item four catches her eye.

_Bake them something tasty!_

That… might actually work. 

\---

After a bit more research, Helena decides that banana bread is a safe bet — it’s simple, nearly impossible to mess up (according to recipe reviewers, at least), and very popular. 

How hard can it be?

First step: gather the ingredients. So Helena heads to the grocery store. She almost runs over two blond soccer-moms with identical haircuts who are perusing the quinoa rack with agonizing scrutiny, because she is on a _mission_ , goddamnit, and heaven help anyone who stands in her way. When she reaches the produce section, she halts and squints at the bananas. 

The recipe specifically calls for _ripe_ bananas. However, all the bananas on display are barely past greenness. 

“What the _fuck_ ,” she says softly and with emphasis, earning a glare from the middle-aged man who’s scrutinizing the avocados. Helena has no choice but to settle for these underripe bananas, to her annoyance. 

Once she’s back in her apartment, ingredients spread across the tiny countertop, she begins to realize that she is in fact woefully unequipped for this venture. Helena’s never actually used the oven in her kitchen before, and she prods hesitantly at the buttons. The recipe tells her to preheat the oven, but there’s not a _preheat_ button, which is fucking stupid, in her opinion. There’s a number pad, so she types the temperature — _3 - 2 - 5_.

Nothing happens. 

Helena very calmly reminds herself to take a deep breath and tries again. She manages to reset the clock (once), start a timer (twice), and almost set the oven to its cleaning cycle before she figures it out: first the _bake_ button, then the temperature, then _start_. 

At this point, she’s feeling a little out of her depth. 

_Butter a 9 x 5 x 3 inch loaf pan._ She’d thankfully had the foresight to purchase a few tin baking pans, so she takes the packaging off those and lines them in a neat row. Helena had decided to double the recipe, figuring that she can give one loaf to Dinah and keep one for herself — and if they turn out bad, well, Harley will eat anything, so Helena can always give them to her. 

It takes a moment to figure out the best way to butter the pan — at first, she treats the pan like it’s a piece of toast and uses a knife to smear a pat of butter around, but ends up just rubbing the stick directly on the tin. 

_Cream the sugar and butter in a mixing bowl until fluffy, then add eggs one at a time._ Easy enough. The previous occupants of the apartment had left a few mixing bowls behind in the shadowy depths of a cabinet. Helena manages the sugar and butter without any issues, and when some eggshell shatters into the bowl, she picks it out with minimal cursing. 

She moves on to the dry ingredients, then to the bananas. Helena, still miffed at the unripe state of the bananas, takes great pleasure in mashing them to a liquid, gooey mess.

_Fold in the dry ingredients._

Fold in?

She frowns. Fold, as in paper? That doesn’t make sense. She can’t _fold_ flour, it doesn’t work like that. Helena contemplates this for a moment longer before sighing and pulling up Google Search on her phone, trying not to get banana goo on the screen. 

_Fold in: to combine things that were previously separate._

“They couldn’t have just fucking _said_ to _combine_ them?” she mutters, dumping the dry ingredients into the banana-egg-sugar-butter-milk mix and stirring aggressively. The oven beeps behind her, and she turns around to see that it’s done heating up. Pretty good timing, actually; she pours the batter into the pans and only spills a little on the counter in the process, and when she slides the pans in the oven and sets the timer, she’s pretty fucking sick of baking. 

“This better be worth it,” Helena says aloud, then sets about cleaning up the kitchen.

\---

They turn out _perfect._ Helena's never tried banana bread before, and she's too impatient to wait for the bread to cool before she cuts into the smaller of the two loaves, the one she plans to keep. She eats a slice over the kitchen sink, quickly, because it's burning her fingertips and crumbling a bit, and mentally ranks banana bread between Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Klondike bars in her list of favorite American foods. 

Helena forces herself to let the bread cool for a full half hour (during which time she rehearses what she’ll say to Dinah later in front of the bathroom mirror, because she’s screwed if she doesn’t have a script) before wrapping the untouched loaf carefully in tinfoil and heading for the door. Once she’s straddling her bike, she tucks the bread inside her jacket and takes off. 

It’s a short ride to Dinah’s, and before Helena knows it, she’s knocking on the vividly green door, bread in hand. There’s no response for a long moment, and doubt creeps in: Helena wonders if she should have texted ahead of time, wonders if this was a good idea at all, wonders if she should just forget it and go home and possibly flee the country under an alibi just for good measure. 

Just when she’s gotten to the point of questioning whether she’ll need to obtain a new fake passport or if the forged ones she has from Sal and Luca will suffice, footsteps echo from inside the apartment, and Helena snaps back to attention as the chain rattles and the door opens wide. 

“Hey, Huntress, what’s up?” Dinah greets her, and at the sight of her, Helena forgets every single bit of the script she’d practiced. 

She clears her throat. “Hi. I, um, made bread. For you.” Helena holds up the tinfoil package as evidence and feels a deep desire to melt into the floor and never be seen again.

“Oh yeah?” Dinah accepts the bread, eyes sparkling with amusement. “Here, come on in.” She steps back, letting Helena pass before she heads over to the kitchen counter, setting the bread down and pulling away the tinfoil. 

“Banana bread?” she asks, eyebrows raised.

“Yeah. Yeah, um, it seemed easy, so I figured I’d try it. And, uh, the recipe called for walnuts, but I didn’t know if you were allergic, so. No walnuts.”

“No walnuts,” Dinah echoes. “Got it. Want some?”

“Sure,” Helena finds herself saying without really knowing why, and Dinah hands her a plate before taking a bite of her own slice.

“Mmm.” Dinah swallows, then says, “Damn, Helena, this is really good. Didn’t know you could cook.”

She's feeling confident, so she replies airily, “I’m a woman of many talents.” 

“Oh yeah?” Dinah smirks. “And what other talents are you keeping from me?”

It’s borderline flirtatious, and Helena’s brain momentarily short-circuits, so she answers, “Uh, killing people?”

_Nice one, Bertinelli_. 

But Dinah laughs, a genuine, sparkling sound, and Helena's tension dissipates.

“You’re something else, H.” Dinah shakes her head. “I gotta ask, though. What’s the occasion?”

And once again, Helena can’t for the life of her remember the explanation she’d planned to give. 

After a moment, she responds, “To say thanks? For everything, being my friend” — _the first real friend of my adult life_ , she doesn’t say — “and… everything.” 

_For making me laugh, for caring, for not treating me like a helpless child or a brutal killer, for your patience with me, for all these things and a million more._

She doesn’t say that, either, but she thinks Dinah understands, because she makes a soft little noise and smiles that sweet, lovely smile — it makes Helena’s heart skip a beat, as always — before reaching forward and punching Helena lightly on the shoulder. “You goin’ soft on me, Killer?”

“Never in a million years,” Helena answers, straight-faced and solemn, but God help her — she thinks she might be.

She ends up staying longer than she'd expected, and Helena savors every moment; every time she makes Dinah laugh, it feels like a victory, filling Helena with a warm, fizzling joy.

("I went to the grocery store, like you said I should," Helena says at one point apropos of nothing.

"And?" Dinah sits back, arms crossed. "Discover anything you liked?"

"I really love Cinnamon Toast Crunch," she says, and when Dinah laughs and teases her and laughs more, Helena thinks that she's never been this happy.)

When Helena finally leaves — Dinah's booked a gig at a classy nightclub, a far cry from Sionis' place — she finds herself smiling under her helmet's faceplate as she heads for home.

Friendship, and nothing more — but nothing less, either.

_It's enough,_ she tells herself.

Helena thinks that someday, with enough afternoons like this one, she might actually start to believe that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI, the banana bread recipe Helena uses is roughly based on the Food Network version online. That recipe does not use the term 'fold in,' however - I included that bit as a reference to a hilarious scene in _Schitt's Creek_. I highly recommend watching that scene on YouTube (and the whole show, actually) because it really is funny.
> 
> I saw BoP for the second time while writing this chapter, and in the movie, it's stated that Helena trains with the assassins for fifteen years. So I went back through this fic to make sure the timeline worked out. For the sake of clarity, the version of events that I'm sticking with is that Helena was nine when her family was killed, trained in Sicily for fifteen years, and is twenty-four in the present day.
> 
> We're getting close! One chapter to go. Thank you for reading, commenting, and leaving kudos - seeing those notifications brightens my day and puts a smile on my face like nothing else. I've never written a multi-chapter work or a slow-burn like this one before, so I really appreciate the support and encouragement!


	5. up in our bedroom (after the war)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the slight delay - it's been a crazy week. Stay safe and take care of yourselves, everyone!  
> Here it is: the final chapter, and the moment we've all been waiting for. Hope you enjoy!

Stepping into the church is like stepping into a memory: Helena recalls going to Christmas Eve Mass as a little girl, the churchgoers pausing to take in the sight of Gotham’s most powerful family filing into the front pew of the city’s cathedral. She had loved the feeling, back then, had held her head high and sat with perfect posture between her parents, careful not to wrinkle her dress, which had been purchased just for the occasion. 

Today, though, nobody gives her a second glance, and she slides into the pew farthest from the altar, in the back of the little church. Helena kneels more out of remembered custom than out of an actual intent to pray, lacing her fingers together and casting her gaze around the church. Poinsettias crowd the sanctuary, and pine trees tower along the far wall; the air smells of incense and candle wax and polished wood. 

After a minute or so Helena sits back. She had done her best to dress up, but her wardrobe is fairly muted in color without a skirt or dress in sight; she’d settled on a dark gray sweater and black jeans.

In a different life, she never would have set foot in this faded little East End church. She’d been baptized at the cathedral and received her First Communion there, and had things gone differently, Helena would most likely have gotten married there too — a wedding that would have made the society pages of the Gotham newspapers, surely, a wedding to a man approved by her parents to expand the Bertinelli empire. 

Helena rarely goes down this path, considering what might have been; she’d realized long ago that it was a useless venture. It leaves her uneasy and uncertain, now; she wonders if she’d have been happy in that future laid out for her from the moment of her birth and destroyed in a hail of bullets, wonders what her parents would say if they could see her now. Wonders if they would be proud of who she's become.

Someone slides into the pew next to her, too close for comfort, and Helena startles and looks up.

It’s Renee.

“Fancy seeing you here, Huntress,” Renee mutters, reaching across her for a hymnal.

“Um, hi.” Helena certainly did not expect this turn of events. “What are you —”

She stops, because she had been about to ask Renee _what are you doing here_ and then realized that was a stupid-ass question.

Judging by Renee’s snort of laughter, she knows exactly what Helena had been about to ask. “Why am I here? Same as you, dumbass. I’m Catholic, and it’s Christmas Eve.”

The people in front of them shoot Renee a glare, and she scowls at them before paging through the songbook to the Christmas hymns as the music of the organ swells to a crescendo and everyone rises for “O Come, All Ye Faithful.”

The ritual of the Mass is comforting, even though it’s not quite how she remembers it from her childhood — the responses are different, which becomes abundantly clear from the very beginning of the liturgy when Renee smirks at Helena for saying the wrong thing. After that, she mostly mumbles just to be safe and wonders why the hell they had to change everything up on her for no reason. 

She’d gone to Mass occasionally with Sal and Luca in Sicily, on holidays and the feast of St. Agatha, and she’d spent plenty of time in the little chapel attached to their house. Helena never had the impression that the men were actually religious beyond those annual obligations; they were assassins, after all. They’d never tried to continue her catechesis past fourth-grade level or discussed arranging for Helena to be Confirmed. 

Helena herself doesn’t know if she believes in God, let alone the doctrines of Catholicism, but even as she stands and lets the words of St. Matthew’s Nativity narrative wash over, she doesn’t think that’s the point of her presence here, anyway. It’s the comfort of memory, of the last fraying connection to the life she might have had — that’s why she came. 

It should make her melancholy, but it doesn’t: Helena thinks that it helps that Renee’s there next to her. At the sign of peace, when Helena stiffly extends her hand to shake, Renee rolls her eyes. 

“Really? A handshake?” And with that, Renee pushes Helena’s hand away and wraps her in a tight hug. It’s not the most comfortable embrace she’s ever experienced — she has to bend awkwardly at the knees to accommodate Renee’s short stature, and one of Helena’s arms is sandwiched against her ribcage — but it fills her with a warmth of fondness and belonging, and she returns the hug with her free arm. 

The Mass ends with “Joy to the World,” and even Helena finds herself humming along. When the last verse ends and the pews start to empty, Helena feels Renee’s hand encircle her wrist for a moment. “Sit with me.”

So they sit. Helena watches parents taking pictures of their children smiling next to the creche, dressed in Christmas finery, and waits. Renee doesn’t say a word until the church is empty save for a few parishioners lingering by the doors. Finally, she lets out a deep, deep sigh.

“You need to do something about Dinah.”

Helena can actually _feel_ her heart stop, then start back up again far too fast to be healthy. “I — we — what?”

Renee looks at her, completely unimpressed. “I ain’t blind, or stupid, Bertinelli.” She nudges Helena, a sly grin tugging at her mouth. “You’ve got it bad, Killer.”

“No, I don’t — we’re just friends, you’re wrong.” The words tumble out of her mouth, but even as they do, Helena knows it’s a lost cause. Renee may not be on the force anymore, but she’s still a detective at heart, and when she has a hunch, she doesn’t let up until someone’s behind bars.

Or dead. Which is where Helena thinks she’s headed at the moment.

Renee snorts, but there’s a softness in her eyes. “You think I ain’t seen how you look at her? Please. Subtlety's not your strong suit.”

Helena swallows hard. “Fine, just — you can’t tell her. I can’t — Renee, tell me you won’t.” She’s getting desperate, and Renee clamps a hand on her wrist in a slightly misguided attempt to calm her down.

“You think she doesn’t feel the same way?” Renee’s voice is disbelieving. “Helena. Jesus. She’s head over heels for you, too, moron.”

Helena’d started shaking her head before Renee even finished her sentence. “That’s not true.”

“Christ, you’re stubborn.” Renee leans back, contemplating her. “You really don’t see it, do you. Listen. Nobody makes her laugh like you do. She fuckin’ _glows_ when you’re around. Hell, she let you share a bed with her. You know what I saw, that night?”

Helena shakes her head, unable to speak.

“You were passed out already, on the covers, and I woke up when Dinah came in to get a blanket. And the look on her face, when she covered you up — Damn. If you’d’a seen it, you'd know."

It gives Helena the slightest flicker of hope, because she trusts exactly four people in Gotham, and Renee is one of them. And she wants to believe her, wants that more than anything else, but Helena can’t shake that nagging anxiety that’s been trailing her for months.

“I can’t,” she says almost inaudibly.

“The hell do you mean, you _can’t?_ She _loves_ you, Helena!”

Helena flinches back at that, and Renee frowns at her, concern etched on her face. 

“What’s eatin’ you? Talk to me.” 

And Helena could tell her everything, could tell her about Dinah coming to her apartment and asking her to join their team, could tell her why she’d almost got her nose broken that day at training, could tell her about seeing Pino in the little boy she’d saved. She could tell Renee all that and more, could talk for hours, because she’s kept so much inside for fifteen years of her life with nobody to talk to. 

The knowledge that she _could_ is what really matters, so she doesn’t. 

Instead, she tells Renee simply, “I can’t risk losing her.”

Helena would never forgive herself, not in a million years, if she did.

Renee sighs, sounding world-weary. “I get that, Helena, I really do. But listen. Even on the off chance that I’m wrong about this — and you know I’m always right — Dinah would never just up and ditch you because you _like_ her. Is that what you’re worried about?”

Helena shrugs, because that’s most of it. The rest is more complicated: as irrational as it may be, she knows from past experience that the people she really loves tend to die. Painfully. Leaving Helena broken and covered in blood. 

Renee, though. Goddamn Renee — she’s too perceptive for her own good, and for Helena’s own good for that matter, because by the way her expression shifts, she knows exactly where Helena’s thoughts are, and she reaches out and grips Helena’s shoulder.

“You lost your family, Helena, but aren’t you still grateful for the time you had with them? Or would you rather have never had it at all? Shit, that fear — of losing the people you love — that never goes away. You learn to _live_ with it. But God forbid, if something happened to Dinah tomorrow, you’d spend the rest of your life thinking _what if_. And that’s fucking miserable, it’s no way to live.” Her grip tightens, almost painful on Helena’s shoulder, and when she resumes speaking, her voice is all steel and conviction. “Love ain’t pretty. It’s messy and terrifying, but in the end…” She shrugs. “It’s all we got. Makes life worth living.” Renee snorts, then, shaking her head and dropping her hand. “Listen to me. I sound like a fuckin’ therapist. I didn’t sign up for this shit, Bertinelli, you’re making me go soft.”

Helena’s still absorbing the impact of Renee’s words, feeling them echo in her head as her chest fills with a curious lightness that steals her breath, because Renee’s _right_. It’s like a fog has lifted, and there’s nothing left but clarity.

She knows exactly what she has to do. 

But first, Helena drapes her arm carefully over Renee’s shoulders and hugs her sideways for half a second. Renee makes a sound that’s half-annoyed and half-pleased, but she leans in all the same.

“For an ex-cop, you’re pretty smart sometimes, Montoya,” Helena tells her, meaning _thank you_.

“Fuck you,” Renee answers amiably, meaning _you’re welcome, punk_ , probably. 

As they stand and head for the doors together, Helena remembers their conversation in her apartment months ago and says suddenly, “I got a cactus. Like you said.”

“No shit. There’s hope for you yet, Bertinelli.” The words hang in the air between them, genuine and layered with meaning, and Helena can’t help but smile.

“Merry Christmas, Renee.”

“Yeah, yeah, Merry Christmas.” She’s halfway down the block when she turns back and calls, “You better make a move, Killer, I’ll beat your ass if I have to deal with any more pining!”

Helena rolls her eyes. “Good night, Renee.”

Renee raises a hand — probably flipping her off, if Helena’s being realistic — and turns the corner, and Helena starts walking before she can lose her nerve. 

It's a clear night, and the city seems hushed. She walks quickly, purposefully; her heart pounds loud in her ears, but somehow, she doesn’t feel nervous. Helena doesn’t bother trying to plan out what she’ll say, and she refuses to let her mind wander to the worst case scenario. She trusts Renee more than almost anyone else, and if Renee’s confident that this will work out, then who is Helena to doubt?

(Besides, Helena knows that Renee wasn’t joking when she threatened to beat Helena’s ass, and Helena really, really doesn’t want to be on the business end of those brass knuckles Renee’s so fond of.)

Dinah’s building is in sight, now, and Helena quickens her stride and furrows her brow. She’s the fucking _Huntress_. She’s killed men without hesitation, she’s looked death in the face, she’s fearless and unstoppable.

She can do this. 

When Helena reaches Dinah’s door, she knocks, not giving herself even a second to hesitate. 

_It’s now or never,_ she thinks, and the door swings open. 

Even dressed in loose sweatpants and an oversized sweater, Dinah’s fucking gorgeous, and the way her eyes crinkle at the corners when she says, “Hey, Helena,” reminds Helena exactly why she’s here.

“I like you,” Helena announces bluntly, and even though it’s the opposite of smooth, she plows on undeterred. “Dinah, you’re my best friend, and I would not trade that for fucking _anything._ But I — I like you as _more_ than that, and I’ve tried to — to stop, because I can’t lose you, I don’t know what I’d do… And I’ve never done this before, it’s all new to me — But if you don’t want this, I understand, I just —” Helena drops her gaze, because Dinah’s face is unreadable, and finishes, “I just needed you to know.”

She’s terrified, but there’s still a flicker of hope. _Please,_ Helena thinks desperately, the only thought on her mind, and she dares to look up at Dinah’s face again. 

Dinah's eyes are sparkling, and she’s biting back a smile; she’s so goddamn radiant that it almost hurts.

“Helena,” Dinah says quietly, “I think you’re pretty fucking incredible, and you have _no_ idea how much I’ve wanted to do this, ever since the day we met.”

And then her hand is on Helena’s cheek, drawing her forward; when their lips meet, dizzying warmth flares in Helena’s chest, intoxicating and brilliant, and she thinks she could stay like this forever.

Dinah finally draws back — slowly, like she doesn't want it to end either. "Pretty damn good for a beginner," she says, voice low and playful, but then her face turns serious. "Helena, I want this, I want it so goddamn much, but I need you to know… it ain't always gonna be easy, okay? I mean, shit, we've got so much baggage between the two of us — Are you sure?"

"Yes," Helena says firmly, because she's never been so certain of anything in her life. The sky is blue, grass is green, and Helena Bertinelli wants to be with Dinah Lance no matter what life throws their way. "Yes, I'm sure."

The smile that breaks across Dinah's face is like the dawn, and Dinah laced her fingers with Helena's and holds tight. "Then so am I." 

Dinah leads her through the door, nudging it shut, then closes the distance between them once more. The kiss is slow and sweet and gentle, filled with promise. They're in no rush, after all, because the future Helena had never dared to hope for now lies ahead: a thousand toast-and-coffee breakfasts with sunlight painting the world gold, a thousand moments of laughter, a thousand lazy mornings and grocery runs and kisses just like this. 

"Stay," Dinah murmurs, breath ghosting against Helena's lips.

 _Always,_ Helena thinks.

And she does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for your support and wonderful feedback throughout the writing of this fic! It means so much to me!  
> Life is pretty crazy right now, but I would love to write more for this pairing and fandom. I have some vague ideas for future works already (coffee shop AU, anyone?) but I'm always looking for new ideas and prompts, so leave me a comment if you have any suggestions!  
> Again, thanks for reading! Feedback is always appreciated!


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